vilshnev

I have found few hotel and some airline websites that suck at providing points or miles expiration dates upfront (i.e. displaying besides users points/in the profile) OR in some cases some hotels don't display this information anywhere (i.e. user has to find out the inactivity time period, last activity date, add the time).

Wonder why such basic simplistic feature is not provided.

Mr. Breakfast

Because it's not in their best interest to be transparent. In the meantime, use a service like Award Wallet.

sdsearch

Actually, one hotel program (WyndhamRewards) has a "hard" expiration date (no way to reset by activity) of 4 years, but it can't show you how many of your points are 4 years vs 3 years vs 2 years old, because its online activity doesn't go back that far.

And don't assume all expiration dates can be delayed by just activity. In the case of many foreign airlines, that's not possible. With some, there's no way around "hard" expiration at all. With others, it may take flying that particular airline (not just earning miles with in some other way), which may be tricky if it doesn't fly anywhere near where you travel often enough. (For example, LAN kms can only be reset, for 3 years, with a LAN flight credited to your account. If you joined LAN because you visit South America periodically, that may be reasonable. If you joined LAN just to redeem for flights on partner airlines to other parts of the world, it could be more difficult.)

Similarly, Choice Hotels has "hard" expiration of 2.00 to 2.99 years (Jan 30 of the year in which you earn them plus 2 years). There's nothing you can do extend that. The old Choice Hotels website displayed this information clearly, but the new Choice Hotels site, while promising to bring that information back, is being real slow at adding it back.

Maayan

Annoying indeed. SPG doesn't display point expiration on their site, you have to call and ask, or you could assume expiration 12 months after last activity - which you can see on the site. 12 months is what it says in their program details and in various forums and blogs, but I recently learned otherwise when I called: My last activity was in August '14 and I called to inquire if transferring miles from AA would extend the expiration. The agent said that I shouldn't be in a hurry because my points are not set to expire until February '16. I said that's 18 months and she answered that yes, the policy is 12 months but they give a 6-month grace period... and they would even email me a couple of months before actual expiration to alert me...

mahasamatman

Which also doen't have accurate information. If you want to keep track of expirations, understand the rules and use your own spreadsheet.